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Literary Lifelines: the Richard Aldington - Lawrence Durrell Correspondance
As Durrell's fortunes were on the rise, Aldington was struggling with his legacy of angering critics and publishers in England, which had led to nearly all of his books, including All Men Are Enemies and Death of a Hero, to have disappeared from English bookshelves, despite their generally agreed merit, as well as critical and popular acclaim on publication. These letters are warm, coarse, entertaining, and ultimately illuminating, not only with regards to these two writers, but to many of the other great writers and figures of their age, including T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, and many others.
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Durrell's
correspondance with Richard Aldington began in 1933, but did
not flourish until a crucial period in Durrell's creative life,
the years between 1957 - 1962, during which Aldington, nearing
the end of his life, corresponded with Durrell, who was reaching
his creative peak with the publication of the Alexandria Quartet.
As it happened, they had come to live a comparatively short distance
from each other in the south of France, to which Aldington had
retreated in 1928.